One Light
by Bardicvoice
Summary: Captain Dobey contemplates faith, love, and the price of the job when his top team winds up in the hospital again, with one in danger of death.


_This one's for the Captain._

_They say there are no atheists in foxholes ... and they do call this the "war" on crime._

_**One Light**_

_Copyright 1995, Bardicvoice_

The little room was silent and empty at this hour, as long experience had led him to expect, and the dim lighting soothed eyes abused by fatigue and worry. He closed the door behind him with deliberate gentleness, and paused to let the peace of the room sink into his soul.

This was the only place in the building where the walls had color: a soft, warm peach, not some glaring institutional ugliness. Cheap carpeting softened the sound of his steps, kinder to his feet than the endless expanses of dull, worn linoleum everywhere else. The five rows of short wooden benches had been lovingly polished and still smelled faintly of lemon, a pleasant relief after the copper-iron tang of blood and the sharp bite of disinfectants. Upholstered cushions promised that the old benches would offer at least a little comfort. The recessed golden ceiling lights were augmented by the mellow flicker of twenty or thirty little votive candles burning in tiny amber glass jars.

The altar beside the half-lit rack of votives was carefully bare of symbols from any particular faith, but he felt a Presence nonetheless. He felt obscurely guilty for not kneeling as he took a seat in the center pew. He had an excuse – unlike his church, this place had no kneelers – but the simple truth was that he didn't think he could bend far enough, and his legs couldn't take the pressure even if he tried; if he made it down, he doubted that he'd be able to stand again without help. He was too tired, and just this minute, entirely too old.

He crossed himself and brought his hands together to rest loosely clasped on the back of the pew in front of him, but his spirit was exhausted and empty, and the rote words of prayer failed to come in response to the familiar gesture. He was left staring at the candles, mesmerized by one flame near the center that guttered and flickered more than the others as it sank low into its pool of melted wax, on the verge of drowning. He watched its struggle, passively waiting for it to go out – but it kept burning, and burning, and he suddenly found himself breathing in rhythm with the pulsing light, consciously willing it to live, irrationally afraid that something else much more important might die along with it.

_Fool – omens and superstitions! When a candle burns out, it burns out – and all that happens is its light stops. The prayer that lit it still remains, and so does the hope it was lit for!_

He forced himself to close his eyes and take a deep breath, to shut out his view of the faltering light, but that left him with the very images in his mind that he'd come here to escape: his men, his boys, his responsibility. His responsibility, the both of them: the one lying pale and all too still, wounded perhaps to death, and the other shattered by grief and fear and rage, and the both of them beyond his reach, beyond his ability to save. He leaned forward and bowed his head down to rest on his hands, the weight of his thoughts too much to support.

The bitter taste of helplessness freed the words he hadn't been able to find.

_Lord, I need You. __They__ need You. I know they haven't been in Your house lately, and they're not much for the letter of any law, Yours or mine – but they're Your good servants all the same. Disciples, even, though they'd laugh at the thought. "Greater love than this, no man has, than to lay down his life for his friend" – they do it every day for strangers as well as friends, and never think twice. And they've kept on doing it, no matter what it's cost them._

He'd lost track of the number of times he'd been in this room in all the years he'd been a cop, how many vigils he'd kept first for friends, and then for men under his command. But he knew that he was here more often now than in years gone by, and more frequently for these two than for any others. Police work had changed; the streets had changed. Oh, most cops still made it to their retirement with nothing worse to show than twenty years of assorted cuts, bruises, and the occasional concussion from breaking up domestic disputes, wading into bar fights, and driving too fast. But guns had multiplied and gotten bigger, and now they were everywhere – God, even _kids_ were shooting each other, instead of just trading punches and black eyes – and drugs and homelessness and hate just spread like disease. And the cops who drew the rough ones – the cops with the talent for caring and not letting go – they lived on the edge, they lived on the line, and they paid for it time and again with their hearts and their blood. And with his heart, too.

_You've stood by them before, Lord, and brought them safe home. Please, God, do it again. The Good Book says You'll never test us beyond our strength; I'm at the end of mine, Lord, and so are they. Please, God, bring us through, all of us. If he dies ... if he dies, I'll lose them both, and a piece of me will go with them. They're my responsibility. They're my boys. _

He'd seen tight partnerships before. Hell, he'd had one, and all the years since vanished in an instant every time a stray comment or remembered sensation brought Mo back to mind. All those times he'd halfway turned to share the thought with Mo – and every time he'd been surprised again to find him missing, hurt to have to remember that he was dead. But not even he and Mo had been this close. They'd given parts of themselves to wives and children, grown apart before Mo's death in ways that these two hadn't. Not yet, anyway. Oh, if they made it through this time, if they stayed a team for another five years, maybe by then they each would find another partner, someone like his Edith, someone to share life and meaning and to lessen the pain of loss – but for now, all they had was each other. "Me and thee" – he'd heard them joke about it more than once, but it was a joke that was seldom funny, and never less than now.

_I have Edith, and young Cal and little Rosie; and I have You. I know that You and they are probably not on speaking terms – they've never been big on faith, except between themselves, and they're irreverent as hell – but please, be with them now, even if they can't hear You. Faith seems such a fragile thing, but they understand its power; and they may not call it prayer, and they may not call on You by name, but what else would you say sustains them, each time this happens? I've watched them, God, and for all they're different, in this thing they're the same: they hold each other to life, they never let go – and You have to be part of that link, because it's love, and Love is who You are._

In this room, he could admit the thing he'd never say out loud, not even to Edith, even though she already knew: that if one of them died, the other would find a way to follow. Oh, probably nothing so overt as suicide, but with the same effect. Given the precarious nature of their lives, they'd tip the balance just by not caring about living, and that would happen the moment vengeance – or justice, if he was lucky – became the survivor's first priority. Chances were that death would accept that invitation, unless some other force intervened long enough for something else to matter. And even though other people did care – even though they had his family and himself, and distant families of their own, and Huggy and friends on the force who cared and sometimes even understood – that wouldn't make enough of an impression to overcome a bond too strong for death itself to break. Only another love as strong as the first could bar the way, and neither had found that yet. At least, not to keep.

_I wonder, sometimes, Lord, why you let things happen as they do. I remember once when Cal was little, maybe six or so, he asked why bad things happen to good people. "God's will" was no good answer then, and it's still no answer now. I can accept most times that maybe there are reasons I just can't see or understand, but that still isn't easy; it's taking an awful lot on trust. What purpose is there in these two being hurt so often and so much, when those around them – even evil men, sometimes – escape unscathed? I know that punishment isn't the answer, and neither is their ignorance of You – so tell me why we're here again tonight, and tell me why they each have lost the other people who could have been their lifelines, their closeness to their families, the women they might well have married? What does this prove, except that they still live and love despite it all, that what they are endures?_

_Or is that it, and the lesson's not for them at all, but for the rest of us – a testament that love endures? Dear God, if that's the case, please let the lesson end; I know that much already! Anyone around them has learned that much by now. Please, God, give them peace; give them back some of what they've shown to us, the light of greater love. I know, I know, they won't thank You for it, it wouldn't even occur to them – but God, I will. I ask on their behalf. And on my own as well, I'll admit. I'm selfish, God; I want them. I want them both. They're my boys. The pride of my heart. And for them, I thank You. They're a trial and a plague and the bane of my existence, and I thank You for giving them to me. For however long. But please – let it be longer than it's been so far. Please. For all of us. I'll do all I can for them, but this thing – this is Your call, Lord, not mine. All I can do is ask. Don't tear them apart. Don't take them from me yet. Not yet. Please._

_Thank you, and amen._

He drew another breath, and raised his head. He felt lighter somehow, obscurely reassured, even though the heaviness of anticipated grief still waited outside the door and down the hall. Pain was still there, and the fear of loss, but they weren't quite so crushing anymore. Admitting his helplessness somehow let him shift the heaviest weight of responsibility off his shoulders, onto Someone better able to bear it. In the space between his sorrow, fear, and fragile peace, he could hear his wife's voice – _"Let the good Lord do the worrying, dear; there's nothing you can do about it, and He'll be up all night anyway. You just do what you can and be content with that, and leave the rest to Him."_ What would he do without Edith – what would he do without love?

Well, he couldn't do a thing for the half of the team still in surgery, but he could at least be a rock and a support to the one fretting himself into a shadow. There'd probably be some word soon – they'd been here long enough – and if nothing else, he could lend a strong hand and a voice against the dark, if the news was bad. Maybe he could take the chapel's peace with him somehow, the sense of hope in something greater than them all, One that still cared, and made a difference.

Grunting a bit with the effort, he levered himself heavily to his feet, and looked around while he waited to let his body accept the burden of work again. He saw the one struggling flame still defiantly alight in its tiny pool of liquid wax, its wick wavering without support, and impulse drove him to walk forward instead of back, to stop beside the altar. Groping in his pocket for change, he poured the odd little assortment of nickels, dimes, and quarters into the slot of the metal donation box on the votive rack, hearing the coins ring dully against each other and the iron before thudding into cotton silence in the bottom of the box. Unlit candles stood in ranks in a tray at the side of the rack. He picked one up, straightened its wick, and with the utmost care touched the wick to the guttering flame. The spent candle winked out, extinguished, but not before the new one picked up its light, flaring up brightly before it steadied down into an even burn. He set it into the amber cup where the previous candle had died.

_Whoever lit this one, whomever it was for, consider that prayer made again, Lord. Grant Your mercy to every soul here tonight, in the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, Amen._

He lit two more candles from that new flame, and placed them beside the first. He didn't feel the need to say another prayer: God knew. God knew.

He watched them burn for a moment, watched their steady, even light, and felt answered.

He didn't look behind him as he left.


End file.
